


Learning to Believe the Little Lies

by Deejaymil



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lies, Sibling Love, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 17:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3987433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft is a brilliant liar; he considers himself one of the best. A lie, when spoken with a firm conviction, may as well be the truth. Convincing himself that Sherlock is dead is easy. But convincing Sherlock's friends?</p><p>He's not as good as he thinks he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Mother's Heart

**Author's Note:**

> _ _

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”_
> 
> **Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Gray_**

There’s a leaky tap in her kitchen and the teapot she lifts with shaking hands has a cracked handle. Mycroft notices these things so he doesn’t have to notice the way she keeps stopping what she’s doing and looking into the distance, as though listening for faint sounds upstairs.

She places a plate of biscuits in front of him and slides into her seat, barely meeting his eyes. “It just doesn’t seem real, Mycroft. I expect him and John to come banging through that door, all excited about some new crime to solve. I can’t understand why…” She trails off and her eyes gleam.

Mycroft places one perfectly steady hand upon hers and clasps them gently. The lies fall from his tongue as easily as melting snow from a rooftop, practised and smooth. He feels no emotion as he repeats the words that have been playing through his mind for hours now. “Mrs. Hudson, my brother was very ill. I allowed him to continue with his delusions, and it cost him his life. We are all very sorry for your loss.”

Martha Hudson looks at him, her face wracked with the grief he cannot feel. Even as he sits here sharing tea and biscuits with Sherlock’s geriatric landlady, his brother prepares to disappear into the underworld. Beneath the grief there is a cunning intelligence to the woman that Sherlock so adored. “Of course, you must have so much to do yourself Mycroft with your… job. And organizing Sherlock’s re… remains.” Her breath hitches slightly at the word and he forces himself to sip the tea calmly, trying to radiate sympathy and the controlled bereavement he should be feeling currently.

Mycroft has always thought of himself as a good actor, but he fears he is finding his limit. “Yes, however. I thought you should know before the media circus find their way here. I imagine they’ll be hounding you at the windows soon. The British media enjoys nothing so much as a celebrity suicide.”

“It’s not true,” Martha says coldly, and there’s no sign of the bereaved friend in her face anymore. Just a fierce anger made starker by reddened eyes and pursed lips. “Sherlock wasn’t a fake, he wasn’t a liar… none of this is true, Mycroft and I’m disgusted that you of all people would lower yourself to repeating it.” She stares into him, and for a moment he fancies that she can see the lies scrawled across his face, they must be so bare for her to see. It wasn’t enough time, he wasn’t prepared for this. He wouldn’t be here at all except Sherlock had begged him to tell her in person. Sherlock, begging. It boggles the mind.

Mycroft understands why though. Sentiment. His brother is ever so prone to it.

He sees the unspoken question. It’s on her lips, and he can’t let her say it because he’s not ready to face the truth. It’s not hard to find the image he needs to break Martha Hudson’s heart. He does so while picturing his brother’s broken and shattered body lying on the concrete of St. Barts.

She shows him to the door after he promises her that the rent on the above flat will remain paid in case John saw fit to return (more sentiment), and she has her turn at repaying the favour of her broken heart.

“A mother should never outlive her child, Mycroft,” she says softly, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her. “I never had children before, but I realize now why they say that. I understand.”


	2. A Friend's Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.”_
> 
> **Martin Luther**

Greg Lestrade is a man who has been beaten down by life, but who has climbed back up time and time again with dogged determination. Mycroft observes the fading tan line where a ring once sat on his finger, the wrinkled and stained cuffs of the man’s shirts, and the way recent weight loss has left the skin on his face drawn and tired.

Mycroft, in comparison, is as always impeccably put together, sitting rigidly out of place in the smoky bar they’ve found themselves in. A meeting with the former Detective Inspector seemed timely when he’d received word of the man’s demotion and suspension pending further investigation. Lestrade is sedately downing his third pint and seemed in no hurry to leave.

“Why are you even here, Mycroft?” Lestrade asks, without a hint of the beer he’s consumed showing in his voice. His eyes, locked onto Mycroft’s face, are tired but clear. “Not really your place to get involved, anymore, is it? What, without Sherlock around….” He trails off and drains the rest of his glass, his mouth set.

“I’ve devoted my life to cleaning up Sherlock’s messes,” Mycroft says, catching the eye of the barkeep. The stout man, without a pause, pours another pint and slides it in front of Lestrade, determinedly trying to look as though he isn’t listening. “It would have been uncharacteristically polite of my brother to have allowed that to end with his death.”

“Not your brother that caused my mess, I did that all myself,” Lestrade says irritably, wiping at the condensation on the glass. “I could have stayed quiet, kept my head down, and taken the demotion with dignity. Instead…”

“Instead you spoke numerous times with the press proclaiming Sherlock’s innocence, attempted to start a department-wide investigation to clear his name, and told your supervisor to, what was it again?” Mycroft pauses for a moment, watching Lestrade squirm in his seat. “Ahh yes, told your supervisor to ‘pull his head out of his… arse.’ Leading to further disciplinary action. I must say, I would have never considered my brother capable of inspiring such unswerving loyalty in those around him.”

“Your brother was a good man,” Greg says, and now Mycroft can hear a tremor in his voice. Whether it’s caused by emotion, or the alcohol, he doesn’t speculate. “John Watson made him a great one. And the Sherlock we knew, the Sherlock I believe in, he wouldn’t have jumped off that building without good reason.” He doesn’t look at Mycroft, instead studying the scrapes on the bar top. “I’d be very interested in finding that reason, and I fully intend to keep looking. With or without my department’s help.”

“Are you looking for the reason for my brother’s very public suicide, Detective? Or are you looking for proof he didn’t die at all?” Mycroft’s voice is as cold as he can make it, already knowing the answer. The routes that Lestrade had been investigating before Mycroft had put a stop to it suggest the latter. He doesn’t need an answer; he already knows how close Lestrade has managed to get to the truth. If he had thought for a moment that the one person who could tell him everything was currently working in the morgue at St. Barts, then this conversation would have been very different from the beginning.

Now Lestrade does look guilty, as well as slightly angry. “Who told you that?”

“The same people who informed me that your suspension was not because of your very choice words to your employer, even if your delusions about Sherlock’s survival hadn’t already made you unfit for work.”

To be completely honest, Mycroft had been responsible for the suspension. He had made it worthwhile for Scotland Yard to have Lestrade out of the way for a short time, although he hadn’t provided the means. Lestrade had done that himself. After all, they hadn’t done all this work so an over-zealous detective ridden by guilt could undo it all in the course of six months. “Really, Greg? A man of your age, defacing buildings like a common lout.”

Greg abruptly decides that this conversation is over. Throwing money down for his drinks, he stands. “It’s been six months since your brother’s ‘death’, Mycroft. You didn’t attend his funeral, you completely ignored his memoriam except to send a ruddy gift basket, and not once have you been to see John or arranged anything to do with Sherlock’s belongings. You’ve left that man grieving alone in Baker Street for a brother you never even took the time to know.”

Mycroft stands, frowning. “I assure you, I knew my brother better than any of you—”

He’s interrupted. “Oh really? Because I swear not even ten minutes ago, you stated that you didn’t believe him to be worthy of admiration, of loyalty. If that’s what you believe, then you didn’t know Sherlock Holmes at all.” He doesn’t allow Mycroft to answer, but strides out into the cold night. Mycroft moves as quickly after him as dignity allows, shivering as the warmth of the pub fades at the insistence of the chill wind.

“Greg!” he calls, watching the greying man pause without turning. “My brother is dead. You would do well to remember that. But know also, that all things must eventually come to pass.”

Greg swings around, eyes keen as he considers the meaning behind Mycroft’s words. “Is that a promise or a warning?”

Mycroft merely smiles, hearing the soft crunch of his car pulling up behind them. “Consider it a gift. Good day, Detective.” He leaves the man standing alone on the kerb, looking thoughtfully after him. Without the resources of Scotland Yard, Lestrade can find nothing that will destroy what they’ve built. It would have been smarter, perhaps, to have said nothing at all.

But he can hardly leave unrewarded the loyalty of a man who had been caught in the early hours of the morning spray-painting the words ‘I believe in Sherlock, Moriarty is a lie’ on the outer wall of New Scotland Yard.


	3. A Family's Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”_
> 
> **C.S. Lewis, _A Grief Observed_**

Mycroft detests Christmas. He hates the forced jovially, the mindless carols, the endless decorations of garish red and gold. He despises the empty chair across the table from him at Christmas dinner.

Dinner has been quiet, conversation stilted as heads keep turning in expectation of a snarky comment from the chair nearest the door. Mycroft sneaks his after-Christmas smoke alone while watching his breath plume in the chill air and relentlessly crushing the aching loneliness of it all. He draws the smoke in desperately, ignoring the sounds of sobbing from the front room where his father comforts his mother. He can’t look her in the face as she grieves her youngest son, knowing what he knows.

He palms his mobile in his pocket, checking it for the hundredth time that day and thinking that perhaps Sherlock might have sent some sort of holiday regards. Ridiculous. His brother is the least likely to remember the date, he never had enjoyed the festive season. Besides, communications have been sparse between them lately. Sherlock distancing himself from home, undoubtedly, or maybe trying to make it easier on Mycroft by not rubbing his survival in his brother’s face. No reason to worry.

Mycroft does worry. Constantly.

The door behind him opens and his father steps out, shoulders bowed against the weight of the world. Mycroft pulls his hand out of his pocket, away from the phone, a show of guilt worthy of a child accused of taking the last sweet. He drops the hand holding the smoke and shifts uncomfortably. His father disapproves of smoking as a rule and had often confiscated their smokes here on this very porch. His father holds his hand out and Mycroft hands him the packet and the lighter. Together they share a cigarette for the first time.

“When your brother was born, I said to your mother, that’s it, no more. We have two sons now, beautiful sons, what more do we want?” he says to Mycroft, his voice grim. “Now I can’t help but think if we’d had one more, just one, then she’d still have someone to dote on and all this would be… easier.”

He turns his face to Mycroft, not needing to explain the turmoil in his expression. They both know that Mycroft knows exactly what’s running through his mind and heart. “Our son is dead and buried and here I am wishing we could have another to replace him, before we have to bury her next to him. What kind of a father does that make me?”

Mycroft feels his phone buzz slightly in his pocket and starts. “Sherlock would have hated another sibling. It was enough having me.”

His father shakes his head. “Sherlock loves you. He always has. He’ll do anything for you, anything at all.”

Except die for him. Sherlock had died for an old lady, died for a greying detective, died for a doctor. But not for his brother. “He always did have such a way of showing affection.”

The elder Holmes shrugs and crushes the spent cigarette under the heel of his shoe, turning to go back inside. “I can’t share your mother’s grief. The way Sherlock is, I can’t fathom that he died that day. This has the feel of a particularly vivid nightmare, one that will pass. I hope that we’re all prepared to pay the price for its length.”

Before the door has even closed behind him, Mycroft has his phone out of his pocket and is tapping the screen impatiently.

**Kiss Mummy for me. Merry Christmas SH <**

**> Kiss her yourself. When will your business be done? MH.**

It isn’t until the sound of his shoes on the floor inside have faded that Mycroft realizes that his father referred to Sherlock in the present tense. Problematic. His phone buzzes again.

**Soon. SH <**

Sherlock didn’t die for him, no. Sherlock lives for him. He’s left Mycroft as one of two people who know of his survival. Mycroft isn’t sure this is a kindness.

**> Merry Christmas, brother. MH**


	4. A Soldier's Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”_
> 
> **John Green, _The Fault in Our Stars_**

He has been avoiding this meeting for far too long. The man in front of him stands with a soldier’s stance, straight and immovable. His emotionless face is a façade to hide the devastation within. John Watson is a ruined man, and Mycroft helped to make him so. The guilt should be tremendous.

Mycroft feels very little these days.

“In the eighteen months since my brother’s death, you have done very little with yourself Mr. Watson. You go to work, you drink at various establishments, and then you return home.”

“I hardly see that this is any of your business, Mycroft.” The reply is brisk, irritated. Mycroft is momentarily glad that Anthea suggested they meet on neutral ground. He has a feeling Watson would be, if possible, less forthcoming if he had cornered him at the hovel that the ex-soldier calls a flat. The outside of the GP where the doctor has found work, while not ideal, is less intimidating.

“You’ve left Baker Street, although perhaps for the best. None of your friends have seen you in months. You are alone all the time. I believe it’s time someone made you their business.” There’s no caring tone in the elder Holmes’ voice. This is business, merely him continuing his duty of looking after Sherlock.

Sherlock has been silent for months, but Mycroft will be damned before he lets the one reason his brother might return waste away. That reason stands silent in front of him, leaning heavily on a hospital issued cane in a ratty, second-hand jumper. “My brother may be gone, Mr. Watson, but that doesn’t mean no one cares about what happens to you.” It is an offer of help, a sincere offer on his behalf. He knows John will not accept it. If he is honest, Mycroft can see himself in the lines on John’s worn face. The only difference is that Mycroft cannot show his emotions so openly.

John looks at him with a blank expression, and in that too Mycroft is mirrored. “Nothing ever happens to me.”


	5. A Liar's Repentance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”_
> 
> **Dorothy Allison, _Bastard Out of Carolina_**

Two and a half years. Almost three. To be specific, thirty-two months. To narrow it down further becomes one hundred and thirty-two weeks, or perhaps nine hundred and seventy-three days. Nine hundred and seventy-three days since Sherlock Holmes died. Mycroft delights in being specific. The moments it takes to calculate how long he has legally been the only Holmes heir distracts him from quantifying how long since he’s made contact with his dead brother. Seventeen months since his brother’s last message, an irritable response to Mycroft questioning his motives.

**> Any reason you see fit to drag this on for much longer? Lying is such tediousness. John misses you. MH**

**Fuck off. SH <**

Mycroft will never admit to his brother how the sound of a mobile buzzing now fills him with a sick anxiousness, unconsciously feeling phantom vibrations in his pocket from a phone that stays resolutely silent. His network tells him nothing, Sherlock is off the grid. His agents haven’t seen hide nor hair of him. Moriaty’s people report no losses, no strange happenings in their inner workings since Sherlock’s disappearance. Not that there are many of his people left. Sherlock has done his work cleanly and efficiently and left few loose ends. Entirely like a Holmes.

If Sherlock is nearly done cleaning house, then why is he not home already?

Anthea is suspicious. Mycroft watches her unobtrusively from his seat in his office. She works diligently from her desk outside his door, for once kept open. She looks tired, edgy. Her nails are the same colour they’ve been for two weeks now and chipped very slightly at the tips. She’s pulling extra hours, citing various insipid reasons. She’s watching him, worried about him. He’s touched by her concern.

He tenses as he feels his mobile vibrate slightly in his pocket, calmly studying the screen. Blank. He imagined it.

When he puts the phone back his hand shakes, ever so slightly. He taps his fingers incessantly on the desk, mind humming. Work to be done, ever so much work, the British government doesn’t stop simply because Sherlock Holmes, the greatest mind alive today, is missing. Alive. He has to be alive. Mycroft has eyes and ears in every country, he can’t possibly have missed his brother’s death.

A knife in a darkened alley, a quick shove near a fast-flowing waterway, poison in food given in kindness, there are so many ways a man on his own in a foreign country can be dealt with.

His computer hums softly, indicating an email on his secure network. A list of John Does recovered across several countries that Sherlock is known to have entered at some point in the last eighteen months. A rotted foot in a river in Cairo, a decomposed corpse of a Caucasian male found buried in farmland in Greece, a murder scene in a hotel in Germany with no body found.  He closes the file numbly, sectioning it in a folder containing reports of the same sort from the last few months. His people will ascertain if any of them are his brother. Some small part of him points out that he is spending more time searching for a corpse than tracking a living man. These days his obligatory visits to his brother’s grave have taken a more solemn turn, as Mycroft stares at the grave and wonders whether it will soon be filled with more than just earth.

He closes his eyes and lets his head slip into his hands, for just a moment. It’s enough to alert Anthea, and he feels her move towards the desk silently. She says nothing, just slides a glass near his hand. He looks at it tiredly, noting the expensive scotch she’s filled it with. He’s drinking a lot more these days than he used to, using the alcohol as a crutch to maintain his emotionless façade, to quell the anxiousness. He knows that people have noticed, knows they talk about him behind his back, knows that they think the great Mycroft Holmes is losing his touch.

He takes a larger than intended mouthful of the drink and feels it burn down his throat.

If his brother is dead, it’s his fault. An elder brother is born to protect those that come after, and he’s failed. Oh, how he’s failed. His phone buzzes, this time for real, and he almost drops the glass in his haste to retrieve it; only to stare senselessly at the message it contains, coded from one of his agents in the field.

**Body found asphyxiated in Dubai, male 30 to 45 in age, Caucasian, dark haired and tall in build. CID has taken to police mortuary awaiting identification. British documents found on person. Further instruction needed.**

He’s standing and Anthea is talking beyond the rush of air in his ears, but he can’t make out her words. Reaching for his coat, fingers slippery with sweat grasping the handle of his umbrella, shaking, bile rising in his throat. A cool hand on his arm, concern in her eyes and she picks up the phone that’s fallen lifeless to the desk. Dark eyes widen in surprise. He doesn’t need identification, he already knows. They wouldn’t have messaged him if they weren’t sure. His brother is dead. Sherlock is dead.

And Mycroft is responsible.

Caring is absolutely never an advantage.


	6. A Brother's Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I don't despise you for what you allowed to happen to me. I despise you because when I was released, you refused to be found and I needed you more than anything in my life. Not to mend my broken bones, Arjuro. I needed my brother to mend my broken spirit.”_
> 
> **Melina Marchetta, _Froi of the Exiles_**

There have been very few times in his life that Sherlock has seen his brother undone. Once in a rare show of anger when he’d found Sherlock in the process of inserting a needle into his vein and once, a true moment of desperation, when a younger Sherlock had fallen into a frozen pond, almost beyond his reach.

And now.

Sherlock stares at Mycroft from the shadows, not revealing himself yet, taking in everything his brother’s appearance has to say. It’s been three years since he’s last seen the elder Holmes in person, two years since they’ve spoken.

His brother has aged ten years in that time.

 Mycroft’s hands shake as he thumbs through the files on his desk _(drinking heavily),_ his normally immaculate clothing showing signs of disrepair ( _uncaring of his appearance, unusual_ ). The picture of their family taken years ago ( _sentiment_ ) is missing from its usual place on his desk ( _guilt)_ where Mycroft has always taken care to display it so the person sitting across from him can see it. A family man, one who can surely be trusted, that picture had said ( _but not anymore)_. It is as much a part of Mycroft’s image as the bespoke suits and umbrella. An image that Mycroft has apparently, for the first time in his life, given up on representing ( _mourning)_.

If Sherlock didn’t know better, he’d have said that Mycroft is grieving.

Sherlock ghosts forward, silent as a cat. In the past, he’s never gotten this close to his brother without Mycroft being aware; observation does run in their family of course. This time however the older man seems unaware of the presence to his side. He’s close enough to read the files that Mycroft is shuffling restlessly through. Reports and information on the men Sherlock has spent the last three years hunting, including a large dossier of Sherlock himself. Mycroft flips over the folder devoted to Sebastian Moran, eyes flickering over the man’s grainy surveillance photo, the only one available of him.

Hunting him had been like hunting a ghost. Sherlock had been forced to become a ghost himself in order to catch up to the man, the act taking two long years. His final quarry. Sherlock moves closer to the desk, laying a thin, dirty hand on the folder. Mycroft freezes, his eyes locked on the hand that had appeared so suddenly in his view. For a single moment, the only sound is breathing: Sherlock’s calm and unhurried, Mycroft’s hitched slightly and almost too fast.

“Subject is deceased,” Sherlock says, his voice low and scratchy. He has fallen out of the habit of speaking out loud in the last few months, and his voice sounds strange and out of place. “Legwork, Mycroft? I never thought I’d see the day.”

Mycroft swallows and leans back in his chair, turning slightly to observe his brother. Sherlock notes with slight concern the increased tremors in his brother’s hands and his pale countenance, no matter how calm the other man tries to appear.

“In matters of this importance,” Mycroft says, voice calmer than his face, “I took measures to ensure they were done correctly. Why did you break contact, Sherlock?”

Sherlock shrugs, his pale eyes never leaving his brother’s. “It was necessary. I wasn’t aware that you needed constant repetitions of my safety.”

It’s slight but Sherlock catches the slight shiver that ghosts over Mycroft’s skin. “Yes, well. You always have been remarkably unaware of the effects of your actions upon others,” he says. “You always were spoilt.”

Sherlock is silent for a moment, ignoring the barbed comment. “You were afraid. You believed me dead.” He isn’t asking. His brother is a fantastic actor, better than Sherlock even. He’s been acting his whole life, after all. But he isn’t this good.

Mycroft closes his eyes. They sit without speaking, Sherlock perched awkwardly on the side of the desk. “It is hard to repeat a statement over an extended period without eventually coming to believe the statement yourself.” He opens his eyes and closes the folder on Moran with a snap, coming to his feet. “Believing your own lies however, is not the same as forgetting the truth. I am glad to see you safely home, brother.”

Sherlock stands as well, touching his brother’s arm. “I’m here to stay now. My work is done.”

Mycroft smiles slightly, the expression sitting strangely on his face as though unused to the sensation. “Then my work is just beginning. Let’s go and bring Sherlock Holmes back to life.”

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited in August, 2017**


End file.
